baby feeding tips and kitchens decorated with last night’s dinner

“As if feeding a baby wasn’t difficult enough already, new research has come out that can give you a nice complex about whether you are force feeding your children and making them fat. Are you ready for a nice big bite of delicious concern? Open wide.

The research, which was conducted by Ellen Townsend and Nicola Pitchford, of the University of Nottingham’s School of Psychology, looked at 155 children between 20 months and six years old. Their parents filled out questionnaires about how the child was weaned (spoon-fed by a parent or allowed to feed themselves using their fingers), the child’s eating habits, and their food preferences.

They found that babies who had been spoon-fed were more likely to eat a bigger variety of foods but opted usually for sweet foods, like fruit purees. They also tended to be overweight compared to their compatriots who ventured into the eating world by using their hands. Those “baby-led” eaters tended to prefer carbohydrate-based food, like toast. Of course, what’s not explained is whether they preferred toast since that’s what they were served—because good luck serving a fruit puree as a finger food. Anyway, three percent of the kids in the baby-led group were actually underweight.”